AppleInsider is reporting they have received more than 30 visits from machines listed as running OS X 10.9. A handful of other computers running Intel based OS X 10.9 have been sighted elsewhere on the web.
While such information can be faked, the growing number of appearances of systems claiming to run OS X 10.9 could indicate that Apple is already testing early betas of the next major update to its Mac operating system.
For the last few years, Apple has been upgrading OS X on a yearly basis. OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, the latest version of the venerable operating system, debuted back in July, which was preceded by OS X 10.7 which was released in July of 2011.
Previously, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard launched in August 2009, and OS X 10.5 Leopard was released into the wild in October of 2007.
If the pattern continues for OS X releases, the as yet unannounced and unnamed next version would be released some time in the summer of 2013.
Mountain Lion got off to a “roaring” start, (had to do it), earlier this year, as Apple announced that 7 million upgrades were sold in less than two months.